A self‐scalable load injection service

Load testing of applications is an important and costly activity for software provider companies. Classical solutions are very difficult to set up statically, and their cost is prohibitive in terms of both human and hardware resources. Virtualized cloud computing platforms provide new opportunities for stressing an application's scalability, by providing a large range of flexible and less expensive (pay‐per‐use model) computation units. On the basis of these advantages, load testing solutions could be provided on demand in the cloud. This paper describes a Benchmark‐as‐a‐Service solution that automatically scales the load injection platform and facilitates its setup according to load profiles. Our approach is based on: (i) virtualization of the benchmarking platform to create self‐scaling injectors; (ii) online calibration to characterize the injector's capacity and impact on the benched application; and (iii) a provisioning solution to appropriately scale the load injection platform ahead of time. We also report experiments on a benchmark illustrating the benefits of this system in terms of cost and resource reductions. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Lipid damage in farmed rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) after slaughtering and chilled storage

The flow ice system including ozone (OFI condition) was tested for slaughtering and storage (up to 16 days) of farmed rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss). Lipid damage analyses were carried out and compared to sensory acceptance and instrumental colour changes. Comparison to individuals processed with the flow ice system in the absence of ozone (FI condition) was undertaken. Rainbow trout slaughtered and chilled under FI and OFI conditions showed a low lipid damage development, according to lipid oxidation and hydrolysis events and lipid composition (polyunsaturated fatty acids, phospholipids and endogenous antioxidants) changes. Additionally, both icing conditions led to largely good quality and shelf life times and to the absence of changes in colour properties. It is concluded that flow ice as such, or including the presence of ozone, can be considered as ideal strategy to be employed as slaughtering and storage system during the commercialisation of the actual farmed species. The ozone presence has shown some profitable effects as leading to an extended shelf life time by quality retention of several sensory parameters; in contrast, some negligible negative effects could be observed on the secondary and tertiary lipid oxidation development. However, the oxidation values reached by individuals kept under OFI conditions cannot be considered as particularly high.     

Shape optimization of an elastic thin shell under various criteria

The aim of this study is to propose a methodology for optimizing the shape (middle surface and thickness) of an elastic general thin shell (i) under different criteria: minimization of the weight, of the stresses, of the strain energy; (ii) with or without constraints: if any, these can be bounds on some displacements, on some stresses.This is a common problem in real life, the engineer has to construct structures which have the best mechanical behaviour and the best price; the price is often proportional to the weight of the structure.In this paper only the general continuous formulation of the problems is considered. From this strong basis a corresponding discrete formulation and some industrial applications will subsequently be developed.     

Link quality estimation in wireless multi-hop networks using Kernel based methods

A new approach for link modelling in wireless multi-hop networks is described for portable devices, based on Kernel Regression Statistics. A non-parametric estimation of errors in the wireless medium provides an efficient and accurate model of link errors between any two nodes. This estimation results from the analysis of the inter-arrival time between any periodically sent packets. The obtained results prove that it is possible to infer on link quality without having unrealistic assumptions or additional overhead, by using Kernel Methods. Moreover, similar performances were achieved for different scenarios, without requiring model recalculations. The presented results show that the proposed link quality estimation can be used in order to improve wireless connectivity and ubiquity in future networks.     

Risk in Transport Investments

We discuss how the standard Cost-Benefit Analysis should be modified in order to take risk (and uncertainty) into account. We propose different approaches used in finance (Value at Risk, Conditional Value at Risk, Downside Risk Measures, and Efficiency Ratio) as useful tools to model the impact of risk in project evaluation. After introducing the concepts, we show how they could be used in CBA and provide some simple examples to illustrate how such concepts can be applied to evaluate the desirability of a new project infrastructure.     

Synthesis and Evaluation of Voltage-Gated Sodium Channel Blocking Pyrroline Derivatives Endowed with Both Antiarrhythmic and Antioxidant Activities

Under the hypothesis that cardioprotective agents might benefit from synergism between antiarrhythmic activity and antioxidant properties, a small series of mexiletine analogues were coupled with the 2,2,5,5-tetramethylpyrroline moiety, known for its antioxidant effect, in order to obtain dual-acting drugs potentially useful in the protection of the heart against post-ischemic reperfusion injury. The pyrroline derivatives reported herein were found to be more potent as antiarrhythmic agents than mexiletine and displayed antioxidant activity. The most interesting tetramethylpyrroline congener, a tert-butyl-substituted analogue, was at least 100 times more active as an antiarrhythmic than mexiletine.     

Efficient wavelet-based ECG processing for single-lead FHR extraction

This paper describes a novel model for fetal heart rate (FHR) monitoring from single-lead mother?s abdomen ECG (AECG) measurements. This novel method is divided in two stages: the first step consists on a one-step wavelet-based preprocessing for simultaneous baseline and high-frequency noise suppression, while the second stage efficiently detects fetal QRS complexes allowing FHR monitoring. The presented structure has been simplified as much as possible, in order to reduce computational cost and thus enable possible custom hardware implementations. Moreover, the proposed scheme and its fixed-point modeling have been tested using real abdominal ECG signals, which allow the validation of the presented approach and provide high accuracy.     

Interfacing human and computer with wireless body area sensor networks: the WiMoCA solution

Wireless Body Area Sensor Networks (WBASN) are an emerging technology enabling the design of natural human–computer interfaces (HCI). Automatic recognition of human motion, gestures, and activities is studied in several contexts. For example, mobile computing technology is being considered as a replacement of traditional input systems. Moreover, body posture and activity monitoring can be used for entertainment and health-care applications. However, until now, little work has been done to develop flexible and efficient WBASN solutions suitable for a wide range of applications. Their requirements pose new challenges for sensor network designs, such as optimizing traditional solutions for use as environmental monitoring-like applications and developing on-the-field stress tests. In this paper, we demonstrate the flexibility of a custom-designed WBASN called WiMoCA with respect to a wide range of posture and activity recognition applications by means of practical implementation and on-the-field testing. Nodes of the network mounted on different parts of the human body exploit tri-axial accelerometers to detect its movements. The advanced digital Micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) based inertial sensor has been chosen for WiMoCA because it demonstrated high flexibility of use in many different situations, providing the chance to exploit both static and dynamic acceleration components for different purposes. Furthermore, the sensibility and accuracy of the sensing element is perfectly adequate for monitoring human movement, while keeping cost low and size compact, thus meeting our requirements. We implemented three types of applications, stressing the WBASN in many aspects. In fact, they are characterized by different requirements in terms of accuracy, timeliness, and computation distributed on sensing nodes. For each application, we describe its implementation, and we discuss results about performance and power consumption.

Preoperative selection for curable renovascular hypertension

Clinical research has defined the criteria for identifying "curable" renovascular hypertension. The prediction is based on the measurement of plasma renin activity in peripheral veins, renal veins, and the aorta. Renin profiles can be examined with the method of Laragh and coworkers (the so-called incremental method), in which values for plasma renin activity are incorporated into formulas to compute indexed parameters. A score is attributed to each index and the prediction is based on the final score. Because the identification of curable renovascular hypertension is made according to numerical rules, the method is easily transformed into a computer-assisted process. The program is written in BASIC, and it is short enough to run on a personal computer.